The Just and the Unjust Part 61

Custer slipped out of the cart.

"Come on!" he cried.

He was vaguely conscious that his father was not seizing the present opportunity to distinguish himself with any noticeable avidity. He had expected to see that conqueror of bad men and cow-towns, the somewhat ruthless but always manful slayer of one-eye Murphy, descend from his cart with astonishing alacrity, and heedless in his tried courage stride down into the darkness beyond the slaughter-house. But Mr. Shrimplin did nothing of the sort, he made no move to quit his seat. Surely something had gone very wrong with the William Shrimplin of Custer's fancy, the young Bill Shrimplin of Texarcana and similar centers of crime and hardihood.

"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, in a shaking voice. "I am wondering if it wouldn't be best to drive on into town and get a cop--Oh, my G.o.d, why don't you quit hollering!"

"Maybe they're killing him now!" cried Custer breathlessly.

He could not yet comprehend his father's att.i.tude in the matter, he could only realize that for some wholly inexplicable reason he was falling far short of his ideal of him; he seemed utterly to have lost his eye for the spectacular possibilities of the moment. Why share the credit with a cop, why ask help of any one!

"You don't need no help, pa!" he said.

"Well, I don't know as I do," replied the little man, but he made no move to leave his cart, his fears glued him to the seat.

"Come on, then!" insisted Custer impatiently.

"Don't you feel afraid, son?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin, with marked solicitude.

"Not with you!"

"Well, I don't know as you need to!" admitted Shrimplin. "But I don't feel quite right--I reckon I feel sort of sick, Custer--sort of--"

"Oh, come on--hurry up!"

"I don't know but I ought to see a doctor first--" faltered Mr.

Shrimplin in a hollow tone.

Misery of soul twisted his weak face pathetically.

"Why you act like you was _afraid!_" said Custer, with withering contempt.

His words cut the elder Shrimplin like a knife; but they did not move him from his seat in the cart.

"You bet I ain't afraid, Custer,--and that's no way for you to speak to your pa, anyhow!"

But what he had intended should be the note of authority was no more than a whine of injury.

"Then why don't you come if you ain't afraid?" insisted the boy angrily.

"I don't know as I rightly know _why_ I don't!" faltered Mr. Shrimplin.

"I feel rotten bad all at once."

"You're a coward!" cried the boy in fierce scorn.

Sobs choked his further utterance while the hot tears blinded him on the instant. His idol had turned to clay in his very presence, and in the desolation of that moment he wished that he might be stricken with death, since life held nothing for him longer.

"Custer--" began Shrimplin.

"Why don't you be a man and go down there?" sobbed the boy.

"It's dangerous!" said Mr. Shrimplin.

"Then I'll go!" declared Custer resolutely.

"What--and leave me here alone?" cried the little lamplighter.

For answer Custer ran to the fence; his tears still blinded him and sobs wrenched his little body. Twice he slipped back as he essayed to climb, but a third attempt took him to the topmost rail of the rickety structure.

"Custer!" called his father.

But Custer persisted in the crime of disobedience. He slid down from the top rail and stood among the young pokeberry bushes and ragweed that luxuriated in the foulness of the slaughter-house yard. It was not an especially inviting spot even in broad day, as he knew. Now the moonlight showed him bleached animal bones and grinning animal skulls, while the damp weeds that clung about his bare legs suggested snakes.

"_Custer!_" cried Mr. Shrimplin again.

But it gained him no response from the boy, who disappeared from before his eyes without a single backward glance; whereat the little lamplighter cursed querulously in the fear-haunted solitude of the road.

Custer descended the steep bank that sloped down to the water's edge.

His eyes were fixed on a dense growth of willows and sycamores that lined the sh.o.r.e; it was from a spot within their black shadows that the cries for help seemed to come. Presently he paused.

"Hullo!" he called, peering into the darkness ahead of him.

He listened intently, but this time his cry was unanswered; all he heard was the grunting of some pigs that fed among the offal. The boy shivered and his heart seemed to stop beating.

"Hullo!" he called once more.

"Help!" came the answer.

And Custer stumbled forward. As he neared the black shadows of the willows he could feel his heart sink like lead through all the reaches of his shaking anatomy. He had pa.s.sed quite beyond the hearing of his father's commands and reproaches, and the wash and rush of the river came up to him out of the silence.

"Hullo!" cried the boy, pausing irresolutely.

Then seemingly from the earth at his very feet came a faint answer to his call, and Custer, forcing his way through a rank growth of weeds and briers, stood on the brink of a deep gully that a small brook had worn for itself on its way to the river below. In the bed of this brook was a dark object that Custer could barely distinguish to be the figure of a man. A bruised and bleeding face was upturned.

"Give me your hand--" gasped the man.

Custer knelt on the bank and grasping a tuft of gra.s.s to steady himself extended his free hand.

"Are you hurt bad?" he asked.

"I don't know--" gasped the man, as he endeavored to draw himself up out of the bed of the brook.

But after a moment of fruitless exertion he sank back groaning.

"Go for help!" he said, in a painful whisper. "You are not strong enough for this."

"How did you get here?" asked Custer.

"I fell off the railroad bridge, the current landed me here; where am I, anyhow?"